


Walks like Thunder

by IaMcHrIsSi



Category: Black Lightning (TV)
Genre: Gen, and the whole pierce family, because i really love her, essentially a character study for anissa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-16
Updated: 2018-03-16
Packaged: 2019-03-31 22:32:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13984686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IaMcHrIsSi/pseuds/IaMcHrIsSi
Summary: Hell is going to break loose in this city, and soon. She will be right in the middle of it, will inevitably be caught in this storm, in this war.Anissa Pierce has never been afraid of thunder.Or: Anissa Pierce, in 13 pictures





	Walks like Thunder

**Author's Note:**

> So I just binge watched the first seven episodes of this amazing series. And I kind of had to write this. Because I really love Anissa Pierce, like, so much, and I adore the Pierce family. I hope I did them justice.

Anissa Pierce has never once been afraid of thunder.

Jennifer was. When she was a little girl, Jennifer would cry when the sky growled, and as soon as she could walk she would run for Anissa's bed or that of their parents. Anissa would hold her, but she never understood.

Thunder is just God's way of making himself heard, after all.

* * *

 “Why did you hit him?” Mrs. Thomas asks. She's a nice teacher, usually. Right now she's glaring though. Anissa's glaring too.

“He was pulling Janice's hair. And saying mean things.” She crosses her arms, and refuses to let herself be intimidated by the fact hat Mrs. Thomas is almost twice as tall as she is. She'll grow, she knows, but she kind of wishes she was taller already.

“That's a noble reason for acting, but Anissa, violence is never the answer.” Mrs. Thomas sounds exasperated. Anissa is proud for knowing that word, but she's not happy herself.

“Nobody else was doing anything. _You_ didn't do anything.” She mutters. Not loud enough for Mrs. Thomas to hear, but she needs to say it. That would feel wrong. Dad would say it's just her being stubborn, but Anissa can't stay silent anymore than she could have let Jim bully Janice.

* * *

 The first time Anissa went to a rally, she was in fifth grade, and it was about educational rights. Some older student had mentioned it, and the idea hadn't let Anissa go, to have the ability to change things, to exist as more than just herself.

It took a week of badgering to get her parents to accompany her, and the whole time, she'd had to pretend not to notice the tension between them, snappy remarks and charged glares. But Anissa looked away, and she read up on rights and facts and what to do if they got arrested.

The protest was peaceful, and Anissa was probably a bit insufferable for a week, what with spouting all her newly gained knowledge to anyone who more or less cared, but it felt... like a start.

* * *

 Dad teaches them how to defend themselves when they are still tiny. Anissa knows Mom's not that happy about it, because it means that Anissa now actually knows how to punch bullies in a way that really hurts them, but Dad insists it's important.

“God will protect you,” he says. “But God always favors those who help themselves, and those who try to protect others.”

Anissa soaks it up like a sponge, and then she goes and tries to teach her friends. They should not be unprotected, either.

* * *

 

Mom makes a point to tell her that she doesn't have to study medicine.

“I'm proud of you if that's your choice.” She says, “but you don't have to follow my path if you don't want that. The world is big, and you can choose whatever makes you happy.”

The thing is, medicine is not about Mom. At least not mainly. Of course she wants to do something like her Mom, wants to be able to understand Mom on this level, wants Mom to be proud of her, wants to _share_ this with Mom. But Mom would be proud of her anyway.

The thing is, medicine is just as much about Dad as it is about Mom, because Dad always wants to save the world, and Anissa can't do it as a teacher, she doesn't think she'd ever have Dad's sort of patience with teenagers, but medicine, medicine can save people too.

The thing is, medicine is about herself. About what she can see herself doing for life, about what she believes in, about what feels right. And Mom and Dad's proud smiles? Just the icing on the cake.

* * *

 Chenoa is … comfortable. Like an old sweater, warm and soft and nice. Beautiful, and kind, but not the kind of person she'd tell her worries to. She never was, Anissa thinks when it's over.

She loved her, she's sure of that. At some point, Chenoa was the light of the sun to Anissa. But it faded, somehow, and then Chenoa was just... nice.

And that's not fair to Chenoa, to stay with her when it's just... nice. Convenient. Anissa knows it's not fair. She knows that Chenoa loves her, more than Anissa loves her, and that's not fair, either. Chenoa deserves a girl who loves her fiercely, who'd carry her to heaven if necessary.

She deserves more than Anissa, who cares, of course she cares, but who hasn't _loved_ her in a while. She deserves more than a girl who knows it's not working but who's too comfortable to say it like ti is.

Grace, though. Grace, that's butterflies in her stomach, warmth all over her, the inability to look away. Grace is a new beginning, and Anissa isn't happy how it ended with Chenoa, but god, Grace... Grace makes her feel like she's in love for the first time again, and it's amazing.

* * *

 Anissa doesn't go to church every Sunday. Mom and Dad aren't, either, and anyway, she has other things to do. Rallies, books, friends... there's always something.

But at least once a month, Mom and Dad will make sure that they have no plans for Sunday morning, and they'll get out the good church clothes, and Anissa and Jennifer will go with them. They don't have to, Mom and Dad made that clear once they hit fourteen. Mom and Dad like it when they come, but it's not a requirement. They want them to make their own choices.

Anissa keeps going to church. Maybe that's strange, for a lesbian to actually like church, but Reverend Holt has personally told her that God loves her as a lesbian just as much as he'd love her as a straight girl, and well, that God that Reverent Holt teaches about? She likes him. She likes him a lot.

* * *

 In hindsight, she should probably have seen the whole Dad-is-Black-Lightning reveal coming, but she really, really didn't.

Which is kind of interesting, because once she had time to think it through, to really examine her childhood through the lens of this new knowledge, it all just fits so well that she can't believe she missed it before.

How did she rationalize the many times her dad was hurt when she was a little girl? She remembers blood, remembers Dad sitting in the bathroom, apparently unable to get up. She remembers it all so clearly, remembers Dad's quiet moans, Mom's carefully controlled voice, clearly hiding panic just behind her beautiful dark eyes.

What did she thing those late night phone calls were about, before she knew? Because she remembers those, too. Remembers Mom whisper-yelling into the phone, berating Uncle Gambi, remembers how worried Mom was.

She even remembers distracting Jennifer from it, tugging her little sister into her room to read her a story or play with dolls or do anything but look at Dad unable to get up and Mom fussing around him.

And yet...

She never once connected the dots.

* * *

 The first girl she has a crush on is a brilliant nerd named Carolyn. She's funny and sweet and sometimes really snarky, or as snarky as a kind fourteen year old can be.

She's not sure what to do with these feelings she has at first. A warm feeling in her stomach, being distracted even in her favorite classes... she'd be annoyed, if it didn't feel so _good_ every time Carolyn smiles at her.

It takes her a while to connect those feelings to the descriptions of falling in love that she found in the romance novels her friend Sara gave her. But in those novels, these descriptions are only ever about boys, not girls.

Anissa spends a day in the library, because that's where she goes when she needs to learn something, then she gathers all her courage and goes home to talk to her parents.

(She's not sure why she worried, because these are her parents. They love her, love her more than anything else in the world, and of course being a lesbian won't change that. But, well... she's heard things. Of parents changing when they heard their child was queer. And she's read things, there in the library, of people turning nasty. But she should have known her parents are better than that.)

The next day, she goes and asks Carolyn if she wants to go to the movies with her.

* * *

 Black Lightning was her hero. He's always been. Black Lightning was the hero of every black child in Freeland, and probably quite a few white kids as well, but he always felt personal to Anissa.

Probably because he is so powerful. He can just go and help people, can actually protect them, from anyone and anything, at least that's what it always seemed like when she was a child. There never seemed to be anything that would be able to stop him.

She doesn't keep count of how many teachers she fights on this matter, of how many times she tries to get people to see that doing something, even if maybe it isn't the perfect solution, is always better than doing nothing.

So when it turns out that she can throw guys across parking lots... well, it was never a question what she'd do with that.

* * *

 Training with Dad is... like everything makes sense suddenly. Like a piece falling into place. She dodges and jumps and pushes, and she laughs, sweat running down her back, and Dad is laughing too, as though a huge weight has been lifted of him, as though he can breathe again.

And she knows that Mom is worried, and she knows that Dad and Uncle Gambi have been fighting, and that this new drug is bad, and that the streets are almost boiling with tension and things are only going to get more dangerous, but, still...

Anissa jumps, and then she laughs, because this is what freedom feels like, this is what power feels like. And when she looks at Dad, she knows he feels it too.

* * *

 Sometimes, in her nightmares, Jennifer and her are back in that room. There are men, and though she knows their names by now, they don't seem to have faces in her nightmares. They're anonymous, just waving guns, pointing them at her little sister.

She wants to protect her, but her powers don't turn on. She breathes and tries to stay calm and does everything Dad taught her, but nothing happens. She's just a little girl in way over her head.

Nobody comes. She knows, she _knows,_ that Dad came, that Dad will always come to save them, because that's what Dad does, he saves people, especially family. But in her nightmares, he doesn't, and she's frozen in place, and she can't do anything.

* * *

 “Are you ready for this, Thunder?” Dad asks, voice serious, already dressed up in his suit. He looks dangerous like this, ready to take on the world, but she sees the taut lines of worry in his body, too.

Anissa closes her eyes. Takes in the sensation of the new suit around her body, still a bit stiff, a bit strange, of the power she knows sits right under her skin. She opens her eyes and looks at her father, loving and dangerous and worried and prepared, and she smiles. Hell is going to break loose in this city, and soon. She will be right in the middle of it, will inevitably be caught in this storm, in this war.

Anissa Pierce has never been afraid of thunder.

“Yes.”


End file.
